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  3. It seems like only yesterday that we were extolling the virtues of such socially produced wonders as Linux and Wikipedia. These

It seems like only yesterday that we were extolling the virtues of such socially produced wonders as Linux and Wikipedia. These

admin2019-06-10  32
问题    It seems like only yesterday that we were extolling the virtues of such socially produced wonders as Linux and Wikipedia. These communal endeavors heralded a Utopian age of unparalleled access to systems and information at little or no cost, and converted Web 2.0 from a mere collection of technologies to a system of liberation and empowerment.
   But the road to Utopia all too often ends up detouring through the business district, and Web 2. 0 has been no exception. By offering the means of production free to their users, other leviathan sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, have generated enormous amounts of content at almost no expense. Even better, this content is a gold mine for targeted advertising.
   Over in Utopia, the "workers" who generated all those articles, photos, tweets, and videos would get a cut of the profits they helped to generate. In the business district, however, users retain their amateur status, while the companies they labor for rake in billions. Worse, contributors don’t even own the content they create. The smallest of the small print in the terms of use, which you must agree to in order to get an account, states that the company can use your content as it sees fit.
   To Nicholas Carr, this smacks of exploitation rather than emancipation, and he coined a term for it: digital sharecropping. Just like the farm laborers of old age who worked the land but didn’t own it, digital sharecroppers grow the product that earns Web 2.0 companies their profits, but they relinquish ownership. Heck, even the most put-upon sharecropper earned a share of the crop he worked so hard to cultivate; today’s digital serfs work on their profiles, timelines, and feeds for free, with targeted ads their only "compensation."
   To be sure, no one on these sites sees their uploading of posts, photos, and videos as "work." But this ad hoc content creation isn’t enough for many companies, so now they’re outright asking nonemployees to contribute. This was preceded by crowdsourcing, which involves obtaining labor, products, or content from people outside the company, particularly from a large group of customers or amateurs who work for little pay. A good example is the phenomenon of microwork, a short, simple task that a company crowdsources for a small fee, particularly to workers in the underdeveloped world.
What do the digital sharecroppers and farmers have in common?
选项 A、They receive less than they deserve.
B、They are paid the minimum wage.
C、They have a share of the profit they created.
D、They get ownership by hard work.
答案A
解析 文章第四段将现代社会中一些网站的网民比作为旧时的农民，因为两者都是付出很大，收获却甚少。选项A为最佳答案。
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